Spoonable

In flavors like classic salty caramel, spicy chili, chewy sesame, peppered orange and flowery lavender, Spoonable’s caramels are impossible to resist. As you might imagine, they’re sublime eaten with a spoon straight out of the jar, but also work well integrated into any number of sweet/salty/creative recipes.

Michelle Lewis is the brainchild behind this gourmet and creative line of caramels, launched in Brooklyn and steadily garnering new fans and addicts.

“I’d like to say that as a young girl I dreamt about being a caramel maker, but no. I love having a wonderful product and I love fooling around with caramel and reinventing (recipes), but the main reason is because I like being an entrepreneur.”

Before launching Spoonable, Michelle had a dog food business. “It never really took off,” she says, adding that financial stress and ambition motivated her to take the next step forward. “I have this entrepreneurial thing in me and I had to do something else.”

Discovering caramel was a Eureka moment, Michelle says, and one that happened a little bit by accident. It all started with a cheesecake. She topped the cake with caramel, had some of the sauce leftover, and started giving it to friends. Little by little, a business was born.

“The thing is that I learned so much doing the dog food,” she says. “With Spoonable the learning curve was much less steep.”

Michelle’s top three tips for anyone hoping to start a business? Organization, organization, and organization.

“It’s such an individual thing in terms of where you are—financially, personally—but the foundational element of having your own business is you’ve got to be organized. I’m not talking about having your t-shirts coded by color and size in your drawer—that stuff is going to go to hell—but it’s about prioritizing and organizing. I make a list every day.”